Never Gonna Fall For
by Alnitah
Summary: Being a nice and accurate accounting of the loves and losses of the Goblin King.Volume I: Sorcha.
1. A Child's Wish

She stood, mute, feathers falling around her while the rain blew in the broken window. Amidst the chaos that her kitchen had become she felt isolated, as if the world were actually silent. She was vaguely aware that parts of her hurt. Over the noise of the storm she could hear drops of blood splattering on the tile floor.

She lifted her hand and dimly contemplated the movements necessary to remove the glass shard from her bleeding hand. Behind her hand on the floor the white feathers had settled in the blood and bits of window. They remained pristine and almost seemed to glow in the moonlight.

She knew he was coming.

X X X X X X X X X

Sorcha Murphy was not the sort to wish bad things upon others. And she was certainly not the sort to come up with a phrase like "I wish the goblins would come and take you away right now."

In fact, Sorcha was almost unbelievably level-headed and well-grounded in reality. She had long ago stopped wishing for prince charming, a pony, or long, lustrous, movie-star hair. She did the dishes when it was her turn, wore comfortable shoes, and enjoyed doing her math homework. She thought maybe she wanted to be a lawyer.

The only indication that Sorcha ever wanted more than what her life had to offer was the worn copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales in a prominent place on the bookshelf next to her bed. But the trigonomotry book and Oxford English Dictionary it was wedged between diminshed much of its significance.So the last thing that Sorcha expected of a Wednesday evening was an encounter with a supernatural being.

The Murphy family, in keeping with their Irish Catholic roots, had 7 children. The oldest two had already left for college; Sorcha was almost 16; after her were Aidan, Liam, and Taidgh (ages 10, 8, and 7 respectively); the youngest was Mary Margaret, age 5, whom everyone called Maggie. In exchange for the use of one of the family cars, Sorcha took on the task of looking after her younger siblings after school before their parents returned from work. Mostly this involved making sure no one broke any furniture and the boys didn't convince Maggie that she should drink cleaning solution.

On this particular afternoon a vicious electrical storm kept everyone inside. Thus the crashes and shouts that now eminated from the direction of the boys' bedroom were not a surprise. Nevertheless Murphy energy was far more destructive inside than out and Sorcha headed upstairs to do damage control.

"Sorcha!" Maggie vaulted into Sorcha's legs as soon as she appeared in the hallway, "they're being mean!"

Sorcha picked Maggie up and headed into the boys' room.

"They said gobblins are going to eat me!"

"Goblins won't eat you Maggie. They're not real… And besides they prefer ice cream," she added when her initial reassurance didn't have much effect.

"Liam! Aidan! Taidgh! I can hear you jumping on the bed. You'd better knock it off before I get in there!" The noise from the other room seemed to have died down and now all she could hear were lowered voices. She rounded the corner into the room.

"Guys I'm tired of you saying things to scare your sister and it's almost time for dinner so you'd—" Sorcha's thought was cut off before she could verbalize it. "Why are the windows open?! Everything's getting … wet…" And now all thought fled as Sorcha saw the man standing in the middle of the room.

She set Maggie down on her feet. "Boys, take your sister down to the kitchen and call 911."

No one moved.

"NOW!!!" Sorcha lunged in between the man and her brothers and they all scampered out of the room, Aidan grabbing Maggie on the way.

The man watched her with an amused expression. Now that the children were away she had time to size him up. He was tall and lean and probably much stronger than she was. He was dressed in white with a long cloak covered in feathers draped over his shoulders. Water from the open window glittered around him giving him an almost surreal quality, as if he might just sparkle on his own.

"Get out of my house. Now." Sorcha tried not to quail under his gaze and privately wished she'd taken karate instead of flute lessons.

He smirked.

"I was just on my way out. But first I have to take what belongs to me," and before she could respond he had disappeared. Literally. Sorcha blinked several times and tried to figure out what had happened. She headed to the window to see if he had somehow jumped out of it when she heard screams from the kitchen.

She found him in the kitchen. The boys were facing him in a protective semi-circle around Maggie who was peeking our from behind Adain.

"Come, Taidgh, don't you want me to grant your wish?"

"NO!" The small boy tried not to cower before the man looming over him but his voice cracked and he scooted closer to his brothers. "I didn't wish it," he managed to get out, but his expression betrayed the lack of truth in that statement.

Sorcha rushed into the kitchen to put herself between her brothers and the stranger. He cocked his head at her and smile.

"My, my, Sorcha, you are determined to complicate things aren't you? Well, no matter," he rolled his wrist and a crystal sphere seemed to materialize in his hand out of nothing. Inside appeared an image of a frightened Maggie surrounded by darkness. Sorcha tried to demand an explanation of this bizarre charade when the boys erupted into shouts and threw themselves at him. And Sorcha realized that Maggie was gone.

The man held up a hand and quelled the children with a look. He made sure they all had a good look at their sister before the crystal disappeared with another flick of his wrist.

"Give her back!" Taidgh shouted, having momentarily forgotten his fear.

"Now, Taidgh, if you want your sister back you'll have to come and get her," he smiled cruelly and stepped aside. Behind him, where there had been a breakfast nook with a table and chairs and gabled windows, there was now a menacing stone archway set in walls almost lost amidst large, thorn-covered vines. No light penetrated beyond the first few inches of the archway. A grotesque, apparently stone face leered down at them from the apex of the arch and Sorcha felt her skin crawl as it raked it's eyes over her body and showed its fang-like teeth.

"You will have to find your way through my labyrinth to get her," he gestured behind him into the darkness. As he caught a glimps of the opening, the man might have almost looked surprised by what he had conjured in their kitchen, but the look was gone in an instant and he turned back to Taidgh. The boy physically screwed up his courage and took a step toward the arch but Sorcha grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

"No. I'll go."

The man glanced at her impatiently, "No. You did not make the wish. You have no right to enter. Only Taidgh can come."

"What?"

Curtly, "I said no."

While Sorcha tried to get past her indignation at the situation, Taidgh (who was still very young and did think of wishing pesky younger siblings to the goblins and so had a much better understanding of how these things worked) ran through the archway. The whole image shifted oddly and for an instant Sorcha saw a much more benign wall with an ordinary wooden door and some stray ivy. She didn't stop to think about it though and ran after her brother.

In her head an angry voice shouted 'NO' and there was an explosion in front of her. She still stood in the kitchen and all the windows of the breakfast nook had imploded at her. Out the window she could see a large barn owl flying away from the house. She vaulted over the table and grabbed a window pane. Heedless of the glass shards under her hands and the rain driving down into her face she screamed after the owl as if it were responsible.

"No! Take me!"

X X X X X X X X X

The kitchen had righted itself by the time Mr. and Mrs. Murphy returned home. The windows were not broken, the dishes were clean, and dinner was ready. The only evidence of misbehavior was a slightly rumpled bedspread upstairs. The Murphy children were sitting quietly waiting to see if their parents would notice that anything was amiss.

Mrs. Murphy praised Aidan for starting dinner and Mr. Murphy shooed them all off to wash up before the meal. The couple then mused about how mature their 10 year old was and how nice it was to be able to trust the children at home alone.

In the bathroom four freckled faces looked at one another across the soap. Eventually they would also forget who had made dinner that night; that there had been seven Murphy children. The human mind will ignore what it can't believe and eventually, when they were too old to believe in fairy tales and goblin kings, they would forget as easily as their parents. But tonight they knew what they had lost.


	2. The Dark Side of Faerie

"Welcome to Faerie."

"Faerie?"

"Yes. The Underground, specifically. That is, the dark side of faerie," He had smiled as he said that.

"Oh." She hadn't known what to say. Her mind had been too busy trying to cope with the concept of extraplanar travel to process the fact that there might be dark planes to travel to.

"This is my kingdom."

"So your kingdom is the dark side of Faerie?"

"No," he had seemed somewhat impatient at that point. "My kingdom is the Goblin Land, the Labyrinth, the Dark Path! …it is only part of the Underground…"

"Oh."

"This is your room."

That had been the entirety of the conversation she had had with the man who had taken her from her home. She was not even entirely sure who he was or where she was. Well, except that she was in a large suite of rooms, elegantly furnished in shades of green and purple.

She had wandered through these rooms for almost an hour after he left her. Probably, if she expected anything, Sorcha had exected the black hole in the wall that had appeared in her kitchen. Or possibly the darkness that had surrounded Maggie in the crystal. A lush carpet, well upholstered chairs, and a massive canopied bed had been nowhere on the list of possible endings of the night. The carved stone bath in the washroom and floor to ceiling windows interrupted by well-stocked floor to ceiling bookshelves in the sitting room were also not on the list. Eventually she had fallen asleep on a settee out of sheer confusion.

She awoke to the smell of food. Over the edge of the settee she could see two small figures setting a meal on a small gilt table in front of an open window. She pulled herself up and walked over to them cautiously. They were about four feet tall and slender with white hair and oddly colored skin: one a pale orangey pink and the other pale blue. They both had almost transparent wings that fluttered softly as they moved about.

"Er… um, excuse me…" The small faeries? stopped their task and looked at her. "Um, I don't suppose there's more food? I mean, um, that is, could I get some?"

The smaller one giggled at her, "But this is for you, Lady Sorcha."

"What?" Lady Sorcha? Add miniature servants and a title to the list of unexpected things. They both curtsied and finished setting out her breakfast. Sorcha sat and ate because she was hungry and amazement did not seem a sufficient reason to ignore her stomach.

In between bites, "So, um, are you faeries then? I mean, or, goblins?" They both giggled this time.

"No. We're not fae or goblins."

"Well, sometimes we're goblins," the orangey-pink one corrected.

"Well, yes, if we lived outside the castle we would be all sorts of things," the blue on admitted.

Sorcha simply looked her confusion and nibbled on a biscuit.

"We're actually invisible."

"In our natural state, that is."

"But in the castle we look however the king wants us to look."

"We've looked like this for a few centuries."

"Er…" Sorcha searched for an appropriate response. "So, what are you outside the castle?"

"His majesty has less control over that. We can be all sorts of things. Goblins or trees or walls. Whatever the Labyrinth creates it creates out of us. Usually we're scary things, but sometimes we get to help the people going through it."

"I was a headless pig once."

"Er, and you helped someone navigate the Labyrinth?"

"No, mostly I ran into things. I didn't have any eyes… I think I was supposed to be scary though."

The remainder of the conversation did little but make Sorcha feel more overwhelmed. Fortunately, once she had finished eating they had a bath ready for her, which did much to soothe her nerves.

Afterwards they tugged her over to another room of her suite. For all intents and purposes it was a giant closet, though it was larger than her room at home had been and contained its own couch, vanity, and multi-sided mirror. The walls were lined with dresses with neat rows of shoes under them.

The not-faerie/goblin servants pulled out an elaborate gray dress with navy trim and insisted that Sorcha wear it. Since she couldn't actualy find anything less elaborate she gave in but insisted on a pair of servicable half boots (still rather delicate for her tastes) over the ornate slippers they tried to put on her feet. Then they left her, promising to bring a midday meal and encouraging her to enjoy herself.

With nothing else to do, Sorcha scoured the bookshelves until she found something sufficiently mundane to lose herself in and headed outside to find a good place to read. And thus passed her first week in Faerie. She often exploded the gardens and fields outside the castle and sometimes inside the castle, usually in search of a good tree or nook in which to read. Fortunately the boots proved to be extremely comfortable over long distances.

She did not see the man who had brought her here. Slowly her confusion gave way to routine and she enjoyed being pampered and having all her time to herself.


	3. A New Distraction

Jareth was bored.

That was the problem with immortality. One could only engage in an activity for six or seven centuries before it became dull. Spiriting children away was beginning to lose its charm. He wasn't even watching them most of the time. Just putting up a nominal fight at the end was a drag and he started to suspect that he wasn't even particularly frightening any more. What he needed was a distraction. Or perhaps a real challenge…

He stared into the crystal that now appeared in his hand. A young woman in a pale green dress sat on a stone bench under a large oak tree. As she read she absently brushed away the wisps of long red hair that had come free of her elaborate coiffure and fell into her face.

The goblin king smiled. Her hair had been much shorter only a few days ago. He was surprised that she hadn't hacked it all off again. His smile deepened. She probably couldn't find any scissors and was mad as a hornet about it. She was the practical sort who would wear her hair short and her clothes comfortable and spend all of her time here trying to find logical, mundane explanations for all of his magic. He would enjoy tormenting her.

X X X X X X X X X

"Good afternoon, Sorcha."

Sorcha pulled herself out of her book with some annoyance until she realized who had hailed her.

"Oh, good afternoon, your majesty," quickly she hoped up from her bench and bobbed a curtsy. His majesty stared at her. She waited with a pleasantly inquisitive look for him to say something. He continuted to stare.

"Um, was there something in particular you wished of me?" She looked down at her book, "oh! were you looking for this? I'd be happy to let you read it. I have plenty others. But of course you know that." She held the book out.

Jareth just barely managed not to gape. Instead he took the book. It contained selected writings of Nikola Tesla. At least she was reading something in keeping with her odd scientific leanings.

"It's really quite fascinating. It's almost like magic. I mean, he did things that were almost like real magic but without magic."

"Really. How interesting," Jareth in fact felt very little interest in the book. He was much more concerned about the fact that Sorcha seemed almost happy to see him and that was not normal behavior for someone who has just been forcibly removed from one's home, family, and reality when confronted with the reason for that removal.

Sorcha smiled, curtsied, and headed back toward her room, presumably to look for another book.

"Could you possibly have forgotten so quickly?"

"Forgotten…?" Sorcha turned with a perplexed expression. "Forgotten what?"

Jareth raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow and waited to see if she would remember.

"Oh! You're right. I was planning to explore in that direction today. But how did you know that?"

"There is very little that goes on in my castle that I do not know."

"I always forget that too," she smiled and headed off down a path to the east.

But he had not known about this. He had expected her to be the most resistant person he had ever brought here and it had taken her less than a week to completely adjust to the situation. He wouldn't be able to torment her at all. Damn.

Of course he could always simply restore her memory. On the other hand…

Jareth contemplated a pair of large blue eyes with a green ring around the iris that perfectly matched the pale green dress that was just disappearing behind a garden wall. Even if she didn't remember the mortal world, she was still innocent and extremely beautiful. Perhaps what he really needed was not a challenge after all. At least not a challenge of the fighting sort.

After all, a woman tormented by desires she'd never felt and didn't understand was just as good as a woman desparate to hate him. In fact, it was more fun to be terrifyingly seductive than simply terrifying. A long, slow, satisfied smile stretched across his face as he strolled down the path after his prey.

X X X X X X X X X

"Oh! Horses!"

Jareth watched in satisfaction as Sorcha ran into the stable he had just magicked into existence. After several hundred years of peering into the minds of unsuspecting dreamers he was well aware that 97.3 of all 12 year old females dreamed about galloping across flower-filled fields on the back of a white, soft-muzzled, devoted pony. And he correctly surmised that most of them, even the ones who later became accountants, never really grew out of that fantasy. For Sorcha he would do even better.

"Unicorns!"

"You should keep your voice down, Lady Sorcha. You don't want to frighten them," he smiled and walked up to the stall door where she stood eagerly waiting for the pure white creature to come close enough for her to touch. He held out a sugar cube in one gloved hand and the unicorn happily walked over and snatched it up.

"Ooh," Sorcha breathed as she patted it's nose and giggled while it searched her for more sugar cubes. "It's so beautiful."

"She," he corrected.

"She's beautiful."

Jareth reached out and gently grasped her wrist and pulled her hand toward him. He turned her hand over and stroked his thumb down her wrist and over her palm to uncurl her fingers. He smirked at the goosebumps that ran up her arm and bent closer to her ear.

"Would you like a sugar cube?"

"I…yes…" she whispered.

He held her wrist just longer than necessary and then placed a sugar cube in it. She stared at her hand where he had touched her for a moment before blushing and quickly turning back to the eagerly awaiting mythical beast. It quickly took the second cube and then hung its head over the stall door and placed its nose at the base of her neck where it stayed contentedly while she stroked its head.

But while Sorcha seemingly devoted all of her attention to her new friend she actually directed a large amount of said attention to the fact that she could feel him watching her. His nearness was extremely distracting in a way that Sorcha had not been expecting. Of course he was the ruler of a large and important portion of the Underground and so would naturally intimidate someone so unused to royalty as herself. But rather than wishing that he would step away and direct his attention elsewhere she wished he would take her hand again.

She had the vague sense that perhaps he had enjoyed their contact as much as she had. But he was the king and surely a king would only court someone of equal social station… Did she want him to court her? She risked a glance at him while he was engaged in offering an apple to the unicorn in the next stall. Perhaps a king could court whomever he chose. After all, love wasn't the sort of thing that kowtowed to artificial boundaries like class. She smiled to herself and whispered her reflections on the king's mismatched eyes into the unicorn's ear.


End file.
